Crash on anything

[thetasig]

A while ago, your team "fixed" one of my documents that had some "index" problems. I thought your 1.8.3 Publisher had fixed that problem.

I don't know if it is the same problem, but I would appreciate it if I might ask that you (Serif) look at the document to see if it can be repaired.

It was created with earlier published versions, and then transferred to 1.8.3.

However, in the end, this document somehow became corrupted while in 1.8.3 - now if you do anything after it has opened (edit text, save as, move a frame, etc.), it crashes within seconds. I can easily include a Mac crash report too if needed.

Would it be possible to upload the document to your secure DropBox site so you can have a look?

Thank you - and Santé

-=mark=-

OSX 10.15.3, AFPUB 1.8.3

[Jon P]

Hi @thetasig,

If you want to use this link I'll get it passed on.

When we fix these files they are done on the files themselves, so it is always important if we can get a recipe as to *how* files get into this state. I'm not sure if we did this the first time we saw your file. Can you link me to other thread where we fixed the file? Struggling to find it via the post history 

[thetasig]

Thanks - I'll upload the file in a short while. Do you want a crash report too?

It was this post - @Pauls had requested the file be uploaded and then Gabe contacted me later to have me download the "fixed" file.

As you can see Gabe sent me notification of the fixed file via a PM - weird that I can't seem to find that PM. Is there an archive of the PMs?

[thetasig]

I've uploaded the document. I tried to open with 1.8.3 twice. The Resource Collection is on an external Volume and it is mounted, so AFPUB did not ask to locate the linked pictures. I used Activity Monitor as it took a good 5-8 minutes for the CPU to settle down as the document was loaded. First time I just edited some text and changed the paragraph Leading. Crash. Second time I waited until the system was quiescent and tried a Save As - it thought a few seconds and then crashed with no output file.

[Jon P]

I've passed it on again. Crash report won't be much use if i'm honest.

What will be useful if we can figure out what steps are taken that get the file into this state. Then we can fix the issue at the source and not have to repair a file.

Can you give me some information about steps you were taking before this happened? Anything that you also did the last time this happen? I can then look around and hopefully find the recipe that seems to cause this happen.

[thetasig]

Fortunately, I have versioning in my blood, so I do have some "good" document versions of the project I'm working on. I started with a good one yesterday.

1st document - older - stable-ish, also versioned. This is a completed 12" x 12" document.

2nd document - the newer one that is crashing after being edited awhile. This is an 8" x 10" format.

I am copying page-by-page from the 1st to the 2nd document. In order to do that I do the following things to the 2nd document.

a. add pages a spread at a time, usually, or maybe 6 pages.

b. Copy (always copying from the 1st document) the background image in a picture frame (full page or full spread) then paste to the 2nd document. Arrange it "Send to Back". I noted that even though the source picture frame is arranged "to back" the copy is NOT arranged to back - so that must be done manually just after pasting it.

c. Copy all elements on a page (text boxes, picture frames, usually) then paste to the 2nd document.

d. rearrange the elements just pasted (as a group) grab lower right inner drag handle while holding the Shift key down. Drag the group to fit (smaller) into the page. Then center the group on the page. Then click outside page to remove selections.

e. work with each item. Text boxes shrink, font sizes do not. So text boxes need to be resized and re-centered as captions for images. In some cases, I select all the text in each or a group of text boxes and make the font smaller. Also checking the Paragraph Leading to be sure it's value matches the font size. Adjust the text boxes to fit the text and place as a picture caption.

f. Work with each image. Some are not set to "Max fit" in the 1st document so they tend to slide away from the picture frame and are not made smaller by the group of elements that are shrunk down. Center the picture frame where it needs to be, align to other frames if called for. This means clicking some other frames just so you can get a line-guide to show up with the picture frame  I'm moving. May have to use "frame fit to picture" and followed by "Max Fit" and then grab corner with Shift key and shrink/fit the picture frame to the area it needs to go into. In some cases I have to double-click the image handle (center of image) so that it will fit into the frame properly.

g. Select all elements on that page - center them vertically (guide lines) and horizontally.

h. Move on to next page and repeat process.

Here are some other possibilities. I noted that the text styles that are brought over from the 1st document (while copying them) are added to the Styles list with new, sequential numbers. I missed this little detail when I started the project. I have hundreds of duplicate styles because of this. An example is a "box" based on the default box that comes with the styles. I made one new one in the 1st document - Box Blue 1. Now there are maybe 40 of those (duplicated) with sequential numbers. This is also happening with other text styles. One of the "clean-up" efforts I was doing is to select a group of text/box and change them from the sequential box styles to Box Blue 1 or another standard Style I was using. This changes the text size (my new Box Blue 1 in the 2nd document has a smaller font and Leading size). It may be coincidence, but it was after these changes that the "good" document started acting up and crashing. But it could have been any number of steps listed above where I'm copy/pasting and re-editing a lot.

Another difference between the documents is - just around the same area where the document is "good" and then it goes "bad" again. I have been changing how text flows between text boxes. The 1st document does not use this feature - just two to four boxes with fixed text representing one transcription of a written letter. In the 2nd document, I have been linking the text boxes and then copy/paste the actual text into the new boxes - where it all flows. This is a new difference that I have been using. I have about 12 letters that are transcribed. The good document (2nd one that does not crash) has just the two text boxes on one page. What I've been doing is to continue to add pages and text boxes (with links to flow the text) and saving test versions as I go. I use the Text Frame panel to set the background colors (12 different colors for the 12 letters) and use a Style "Letters Home" and make sure that is applied to the text. There are also the text frames that are styled as "boxes" and making that Style change to the standard (non-sequential) box Style I now use. I got to about the 10th letter home when the document started acting up and it would just crash when I tried to continue the process. That's about 10-12 spreads added to the "good" version.

Do keep in mind the earlier "fix" you did for me - apparently something to do with the Indexing/Index marks, and "See Also" types of references. Those index marks are also coming into the 2nd document from the 1st document as I paste the text in. One probability is that an earlier index mark (in the sequence of pages) that has a "see also" reference, references an index mark that HAS NOT yet been added to the document.

I do have lots of memory in the "very fast" machine 64 GB 2667 MHz DDR4; 2.4 GHz 8-core Intel Core i9; available disk storage 2.81 TB; Catalina 10.15.3 and using AFPUB 1.8.3 currently.

Thanks for helping out - hope what I've written might help to narrow down what is going on.

 

[thetasig]

See also this related link "Document has changed:"

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/116724-document-has-changed/